the muse & the marketplace 2010

saturday "hour of power"

Saturday, May 1st, 2010, from 3:45pm to 4:45pm

Note: There is no need to pre-register for these large-group seminars, which are first-come, first-served. You can decide which seminar you’d like to attend the day of the conference. Descriptions will be included in the program as a reminder. Feel free to attend more than one, but please be courteous when entering and exiting the rooms when sessions are already in progress.


Option 1: Approaches to the MFA
Panelists: Victor Lavalle (Warren Wilson, Columbia), Liza Ketchum (Hamline, Vermont College) and Benjamin Percy (Iowa State, Pacific University, Southern Illinois University). Moderated by Ron MacLean.
Most published writers, especially fiction writers, have gone through Masters of Fine Arts programs. While oft-maligned for various reasons, these programs have also provided some of our favorite writers with mentorship, community, craft-based learning and time. On this panel, representatives from a few different MFA programs will discuss the pros and cons of MFAs in general and offer some specific thoughts on where and when to go, a little bit on how to get in, and how to make the most of a program once you’ve matriculated.

Option 2: Submitting Your Work
Leader: Jim Scott
Are you a short story writer interested in submitting your work to literary magazines? A novelist interested in excerpting chapters of a longer work? A narrative non-fiction writer with ideas for features or personal essays? This informative session will provide advice on how to get your work out there, with tips on how to decide where to send your work, successful cover letters, submission strategies, schedules, contests and more.

Option 3: Guided Open Mic: How to Better Perform Your Work for an Audience
Leader: Stephen McCauley
Your chance to show off your skills by reading five minutes of your work (usually about 600 words of prose) to your fellow participants and any guest authors, editors or agents who drop by. At this event, one of our instructors will be on hand to talk about what makes a good reading – from how to pick the right excerpt to how to perform that excerpt like a professional.

Option 4: Jumpstart Your Writing
Leader: Sherry Ellis
What better way to end the day than by producing new work to take home with you? The session leader will provide unique and inspiring prompts that get you brainstorming ideas for new stories and writing new scenes. The focus will be on creating memorable characters and settings, inventing plots and improving dialogue. Open to fiction and non-fiction writers.

Option 5: Know Your Rights! The 10 Worst Legal Mistakes That An Author Can Make
Leader: Zick Rubin and Brenda Ulrich
Publishing and copyright lawyers Zick Rubin and Brenda Ulrich will fill you in on the 10 worst legal mistakes you can make and how to avoid them. They will tell you what to look out for -- and what not to worry about -- in book publishing contracts, collaboration agreements, and agents' agreements. They will also provide pointers on the law of copyright, trademark, and defamation. Bring your own legal questions on any aspect of publishing.

Option 6: Author Idol
Panelists: Elinor Lipman, Mameve Medwed and Anita Shreve
This is a version of “Literary Idol,” but with three established, critically-acclaimed and best-selling authors as judges. Important: Please read this description carefully before signing up, and bring all necessary materials to the session if you wish to have your work read aloud!In this freewheeling session, a trained actor will perform the first page of YOUR unpublished manuscript for the audience and a panel of three “judges.” The judges are authors with years of experience working with agents, editors and hearing from trusted readers. When one of the authors hears a line that would give her pause and wonder about the strength of the writing, she will raise her hand. The actor will keep reading until a second judge raises his hand. The judges will then discuss WHY the lines gave them pause, and offer concrete (if subjective) suggestions to the (anonymous) author. If no author raises his/her hand, the judges will discuss what made the excerpt work so well. All excerpts will be evaluated *anonymously.* Please bring THE FIRST 250 WORDS of your manuscript (fiction or non-fiction only, please) double-spaced, to the session, TITLED, with its genre marked clearly at the top. You will leave it in a box at the front of the room, and the manuscript will be chosen randomly by the actor. (Unfortunately, given the volume of submissions, we can’t guarantee that yours will be read aloud). We do hope and expect this to be a fun event that is respectful of your work and illuminates the process a seasoned writer and reader goes through when she gets a new piece of fiction or non-fiction from a student or friend. The point is not to get through as many writers as we can, but to thoughtfully evaluate the work at hand. Please be aware that some lines may cause laughter or scorn; in other words, this session is not for the thin-skinned!

Option 7: Creating an Unboxed Platform
Leader: Writer Unboxed co-founder Therese Walsh
Writers hear constantly about the importance of platform. But what exactly is it, and is it really possible to build one if you’re a fiction writer? In this session, you’ll learn what you can do to increase your visibility and name recognition—not just your novel’s—via blogging; building a website that supports your existing platform; and smart networking with Twitter, Facebook, and beyond.

Option 8: Beating the Block
Leader: Alisa Libby
Have you ever suffered writer’s block, and perhaps feared that you would never write again? Let’s come together as writers and bring the issue of the “block” into the open. Is it a sign that your current project is going nowhere, or just a natural part of the mysterious creative process? Whatever your thoughts, there are many different ways to approach the issue. Author Alisa M. Libby will share strategies for dealing with a fickle muse, offer writing exercises and time for questions and discussion.

Option 9: Baby Steps to Big Books
Leader: Matthew Frederick
This session will address a misstep common among unpublished writers: investing too much effort in writing one "great" work instead of more works. Successful writers know, however, that real writers write, and that even minor writing opportunities can be the most important ones to take on. They can help us clarify our thinking, improve our narrative skills, generate an audience, make contacts in the publishing industry, and even earn us money. In this session, bestselling author Matthew Frederick, creator of the 101 Things I Learned book series, will help identify some of the useful baby steps you can take toward realizing your big book. You will generate a Things I Don’t Want to Do List of minor, unexplored writing opportunities that you might deem beneath your ambitions—letters to the editor, PR copy, community newspaper articles, book and movie reviews, blog comments, and more—but that can turn out to be the most productive steps in your writing career.

All descriptions above will be reprinted in the conference program for easy reference.